I am waiting. There I am, see me, waiting on the train station platform. I am waiting for my train. It is a specific train that I am waiting for. When a train begins pulling into the station, I grow excited, I think—This is it, this is going to be my train, I can finally board. Then I see that it is not my train. I am disappointed. Oh, well, the next train. Or the one after that. It has to come eventually.

   I want you to understand that it is essential that I get on the right train. The wrong train won’t do me any good. It would just be riding for riding’s sake. Motion for motion’s sake. No, I must exercise deep patience. I must abide and wait. Because when my train comes, and I get on board … what then? I will somehow be transfigured. Changed. I will be transported to the new and altogether marvelous. I will become known to myself in a new and different way. Yet there is only one train that can get me there, only one train that can conduct that metamorphosis, and so I wait. Sometimes I doubt. Why hasn’t my train come? It’s been so long. But has it? Perhaps it just feels that long. Relativity and all that jazz. Yet there has been so many other trains, trains which have cycled and recycled through this station, and my train … never, not once. What if I am waiting on the wrong platform? What if this is the wrong station? The wrong state? The wrong country? What if I need to switch realities altogether? These speculations weigh on my mind and induce anxiety. Because they all point to the same menacing conclusion: What if I never get on my train? A train that never arrives is impossible to board, right?

   No matter the answer, I continue to wait. I have trained myself to wait. Am I full of faith? Am I deluded? Is my confession of doubt proof of my delusion? Am I too stubborn and set in my ways that I am missing the opportunities that these other trains present to me? These trains pull in and out of the station, one after another, collecting passengers who, seemingly without reluctance or hesitation, board the trains and are whisked away. Yet despite the continued demonstrations of ease with which the passengers board these trains, I cannot do it. Something stops me. These trains are not my train. But what is my train? Does it even exist? Did I invent it?

   I continue to wait. Patiently and impatiently all at once. Burning inside. That is me, there, in the overcoat and fedora, suitcase in hand, waiting. I am somewhat recognizable to myself as a shadowy figure, an apparition, a totemic stand-in, someone who bears great psychic resemblance to me, someone who is waiting for a train that is running behind, or perhaps, perhaps I am ahead, too far ahead, and the train schedule does not accommodate the prophetic gist of dreamers on platforms.